Following a 90s Cover Band Through Austin, TX

We didn't just eat in Austin, even if that's what we planned our days around, and our routes through the city. We saw a lot of live music too.

Our nights we planned around following the 90s rock cover band we discovered the first night at The Thirsty Nickel: Nothing Left.

(While I spent most of the 90s listening to Christian music, Diego, Jagger, and especially Corin and Little Fox got sucked into grunge rock and hard rock just like every other preteen boy.)

We walked into the Thirsty Nickel because we thought we heard good music and we didn't leave for three hours. They played Nirvana, STP, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Gin Blossoms, R.E.M. and all the standards from our adolescence.

And the thing about the lead singer, John Prather, is that he's really good at mimicking the sound of all those vocalists. You can tell he's listened to a lot of rock.

I felt a little left out that first night, but the second night, when we followed Nothing Left to Bar Louie, they played more classic rock, and I was bouncing around, banging out air guitars, while the other guys sat and drank their beers. Black Crows, Credence, Steve Miller Band, the good stuff.

(By the time I was 16, some of the older guys in my church would put on classic while we drove around pretending to make mischief, so I thankfully found something besides DC Talk to listen to.)

It was that second night at Bar Louie that we got duped by Tatiana.

Wherever Nothing Left was playing that weekend, we showed up. The third night we followed them to the Dizzy Rooster on 6th, even though we'd eaten dinner in Foster Heights, walked through the hipster section of East Austin, and knew we had to end the night in South Congress to get doughnuts at Gordoughs.

Nothing Left made our trip about more than food. We made this trip together because we grew up together, and there really wasn't a better way to honor that than going all out for the music we grew up listening to.